Harnessing the power of smart and connected health to tackle COVID-19: IoT, AI, Robotics, and Blockchain for a better world
OA Location
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
As COVID-19 hounds the world, the common cause of finding a swift solution to manage the pandemic has brought together researchers, institutions, governments, and society at large. The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) — including Machine Learning (ML) and Big Data analytics — as well as Robotics and Blockchain, are the four decisive areas of technological innovation that have been ingenuity harnessed to fight this pandemic and future ones. While these highly interrelated smart and connected health technologies cannot resolve the pandemic overnight and may not be the only answer to the crisis, they can provide greater insight into the disease and support frontline efforts to prevent and control the pandemic. This paper provides a blend of discussions on the contribution of these digital technologies, propose several complementary and multidisciplinary techniques to combat COVID-19, offer opportunities for more holistic studies, and accelerate knowledge acquisition and scientific discoveries in pandemic research. First, four areas where IoT can contribute are discussed, namely, i) tracking and tracing, ii) Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) by Wearable IoT (WIoT), iii) Personal Digital Twins (PDT), and iv) real-life use case: ICT/IoT solution in Korea. Second, the role and novel applications of AI are explained, namely: i) diagnosis and prognosis, ii) risk prediction, iii) vaccine and drug development, iv) research dataset, v) early warnings and alerts, vi) social control and fake news detection, and vii) communication and chatbot. Third, the main uses of robotics and drone technology are analyzed, including i) crowd surveillance, ii) public announcements, iii) screening and diagnosis, and iv) essential supply delivery. Finally, we discuss how Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), of which blockchain is a common example, can be combined with other technologies for tackling COVID-19.
Date Issued
2021-04-19
Date Acceptance
2021-04-02
Citation
IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2021, 8 (16), pp.12826-12846
ISSN
2327-4662
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
12826
End Page
12846
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Volume
8
Issue
16
Copyright Statement
© IEEE 2021. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis.
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9406879
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Computer Science, Information Systems
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Telecommunications
Computer Science
Engineering
COVID-19
Pandemics
Artificial intelligence
Medical services
Internet of Things
Vaccines
Robots
Artificial intelligence (AI)
big data
blockchain
digital twin
eHealth
healthcare
Internet of Things (IoT)
pandemic
robotics
wearable
WEARABLE DEVICES
CHALLENGES
INTERNET
THINGS
0805 Distributed Computing
1005 Communications Technologies
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-04-19